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43Folders.com is Merlin Mann’s website about finding the time and attention to do your best creative work.

Gmail for GTD Implementation

Gmailgtdlabels2_1Google’s Gmail lets you create custom labels for tagging any of your messages. This seems ready-made for a Getting Things Done implementation.

Your “INBOX” holds your unprocessed mail, while your processed messages are manually shuttled into the appropriate buckets. All that processed mail lives in the same archive, but you use your custom Gmail labels as GTD “facets” to quickly pull up just the messages you need for your current context.

Plus, of course, you can “Google” your own mail archive with the program’s excellent, advanced searching options. Believe me, this will soon have you wishing every mail program’s searching was this robust (I’m looking at you, Mail.app).

Anyone out there tried a Gmail implementation of GTD yet?

bryce's picture

Based on a previous entry...

Based on a previous entry on 43Folders, I started using gmail for GTD. Basically, I created a label called "todo" which I use to label... guess what. Whenever I finish a task, I remove the "todo" label. I also created a label called "reply would be nice" for messages (usually from friends) that don't merit an immediate response, but a reply would be nice.

Since I still have messages arriving in Thunderbird for my work mail, I created a folder called Todo, and a subfolder called Todo-gmailed. I put anything that needs action in the todo folder, and then periodically I use gmailloader to shuttle those messages to gmail. It's redundant, I realize. After I've loaded my messages into gmail, then I move them into the subfolder todo-gmailed.

I'd love to hear further suggestions for optimizing email management with gmail.

 
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